As children, my friends and I thought it was fun to ring our neighbor’s doorbell and then hide. We would hide and wait for them come to the door expecting someone to be there. We would snicker from our hiding place watching how frustrated they would get when no one was there. And — for whatever reason — it seemed to get funnier each time, when repeated with the same neighbor over and over again.
Today, in a business environment, when we are trying to build productive relationships, we would not think it funny at all to summon our customers to the door, and then to not be there to personally greet them. Unfortunately, many respectable businesses are delivering this experience many times every day. It happens every time you reach out to call your customers or prospects, but when they answer the phone all they hear is silence — you are not there to greet them.
We have convinced ourselves that this is just an unavoidable side effect of running our outbound campaign. We try to justify this behavior as necessary to use our agent resources most effectively. But consider this: don’t we owe those customers and our agents a better opportunity to connect with each other? On average, you have just 5 seconds to establish rapport with your customer; research suggests if you do not manage to do that, you may never even get to deliver your intended message.
Ask yourself, “What do you do when your phone rings and no one is there to respond after you answer?” Do you wait patiently as the calling company locates a human to talk to you? Or are you among the nearly 60% that immediately hang up the phone - before being connected to that call center agent? We have all learned what that awkward pause represents. Perhaps, if the caller ID is informative enough to identify someone that you really wanted to talk to, and then you may choose to wait for the agent, so you can have that conversation. However, if you feel like I do, it still annoys you that they made you wait, and then when finally the agent arrives to the call they are not even sure if anyone is there anymore. More often than not, it raises your defenses and makes you more resistant to the goal of creating a positive connection with you.
Contrast this experience with this: How does it feel when you answer the phone and there is immediately someone there to greet you? For me, it feels like I am talking to a friend. What if your customers could receive that same personal experience of having an agent greet them immediately each time you call them and your agents’ time is still used productively? NICE CXone Personal Connection offers you the patented delivery approach that does away with the awkward pause at the beginning of an outbound call. It ensures a personal interaction experience while still keeping agents productive. Personal Connection of course also handles the answering machines for the agents, all the while providing a natural contact experience that your customers are sure to appreciate.
This superior customer experience has proven to drive lower campaign costs by accomplishing the desired penetration of your lists with fewer attempts. It requires less calling hours, increases conversion rates and drives higher agent utilization. All this adds up to an increased bottom line, but — more importantly — you are building positive customer relationships by respecting your customers enough not to “doorbell ditch” them every time you call.
